Wait and keep quiet.

I'll soon be back." I knew that I should find their horses' hoof-marks at whatever place they had left the stream; and I followed the brook silently, craftily and slowly, like a hunter trailing a wild beast, examining the bank of soft black rooty earth for their tracks.

Once or twice I passed across open spaces in the grove.

Here I crept on my belly through the brush and weeds shoving my gun along ahead of my body.
My heart beat high.

I never for a moment doubted the desperate character of the men, and in this I think I showed good judgment; for what honest horsemen would have left the Ridge Road, or if any honest purpose had drawn them away, what honest men would have forced their horses to wade in the channel of a swollen stream in the middle of the night?
They must have been trying to travel without leaving tracks, just as I had done.
Their talk showed them to be bad characters, and their fox-like actions proved the case against them.